Happy Good Friday! Yesterday was a very good Thursday for President Donald Trump, and a very bad one for the media outlets that lied about the Russian Collusion fantasy for two years.
For approximately 3 million people, nothing in the Mueller report could exonerate President Trump of “Russian collusion,” obstruction of justice, and various other high crimes and misdemeanors of which they are certain he is guilty. For those 3 million people (a number reflecting the combined average weekday primetime audience of CNN and MSNBC) Trump’s guilt is an indisputable fact, his presidency an ongoing crime against humanity, his 2016 election a fraud. In a nation of 325 million people, of course, 3 million is less than a single percentage point. However, that hard-core audience of obsessive Trump-haters includes every Democrat in Washington and the vast majority of our nation’s journalists, university faculty, and other such members of the intelligentsia. Therefore, their deranged idée fixehas enormous influence, calling into existence a sort of anti-Trump industry that manufactures a constant output of rage-inducing propaganda. The CNN/MSNBC bubble is the cable-TV equivalent of a cult compound, where dissent from their political religion is forbidden. For the past two years, the fanatics have been told every night by Rachel Maddow, Don Lemon, et al. that the final destruction of Trump was at hand — “the walls are closing in!” — and the left-wing faithful awaited their deliverance from the evil man in the White House.
“Orange Man Bad” — that’s a shorthand label for the anti-Trump mentality, coined by an anonymous contributor on a Reddit forum in 2017, mocking the robotic mindlessness of the president’s enemies. No fact that might contradict their Trump-hating beliefs has any validity to them, because Orange Man Bad. By obverse principle, anything done to harm Trump or his supporters, including libel and violent assault, is considered legitimate, because Orange Man Bad. Living inside a media-generated echo chamber where everyone shares their simplistic worldview, the Trump-haters tune in nightly to their MSNBC/CNN religious revival and are catechized, so to speak, with the latest reiteration of the Orange Man Bad gospel.
What else can explain what happened Thursday, after Mueller finally delivered his 448-page “Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election.” The delivery of the special counsel’s report was preceded by a press conference at which Attorney General William Barr summarized the result of the investigation. Barr “made clear that, after two years of investigation, thousands of subpoenas, and endless media speculation, the ‘Russian collusion’ story was, as some of us had noted all along, a story about nothing,” as Professor Glenn Reynolds observed. “No member of Trump’s campaign — and in fact, no American anywhere — colluded with the Russians to influence the campaign.” Contrary to what MSNBC and CNN viewers had been told night after night for month after month, Trump is not a Kremlin stooge and yet: “Orange Man Bad!”
Proven wrong on the matter of “Russian collusion,” the anti-Trump media sifted through the Mueller report in search of evidence of other wrongdoing by the president, who of course must be guilty of something. The Twitter feeds of media types filled up with excerpts of the report proving… what? Well, Trump was very angry about being falsely accused of “collusion,” and he didn’t enjoy watching his former associates being investigated and prosecuted as part of what he considered a partisan witch hunt, inspired in large measure by the phony Steele dossier paid for by the Clinton campaign. But we already knew that. Trump’s animus toward the Mueller investigation was certainly no secret, but being angry is not a crime and, however angry he was, nothing Trump did amounted to obstruction of justice. Because there was no “collusion,” and thus no crime to conceal, it would be hard to figure out how or why justice could be obstructed in such a case. The innocent don’t fear justice, and if Trump was innocent of “collusion” (as Mueller concluded) why should he engage in obstruction? Never mind basic logic, cried the Trump-haters, because Orange Man Bad!
“Their minds are made up, and mere facts cannot penetrate their ironclad certainty about Trump’s maliciousness.”
The American political and media elites that spent the first two years of the Trump administration promoting the Russian collusion hoax have some explaining to do. And not merely explaining: They owe the president an apology.
As Attorney General William Barr said on Thursday before releasing the Mueller report, “After nearly two years of investigation, thousands of subpoenas, and hundreds of warrants and witness interviews, the special counsel confirmed that the Russian government sponsored efforts to illegally interfere with the 2016 presidential election but did not find that the Trump campaign or other Americans colluded in those schemes.”
And yet nearly the entire complex of elite media was actively complicit in promoting the biggest political conspiracy theory in American history: that Hillary Clinton lost the election because Donald Trump conspired with Vladimir Putin to — well, that was always a moving target — but to somehow deprive Mrs. Clinton of victory. What we now know definitively is that Robert Mueller, the special counsel, and a team of very accomplished, mostly Clinton-supporting, prosecutors were unable to find evidence of a conspiracy that had been taken as an article of faith by Trump haters.
Journalists don’t like being called “fake news,” but too many of them uncritically accepted the Trump-Russia narrative, probably because of their strong distaste for Mr. Trump himself. But that lack of objectivity represents a major professional failure, and it’s Exhibit A in why Mr. Trump’s taunt resonates with so many Americans. Gallup polling shows that for 69 percent of Americans, trust in the media has fallen over the last decade. Among Republicans, it’s 94 percent; for independents, it’s 75 percent and for moderates it’s 66. Only among self-identified liberals and progressives does a majority continue to trust the media. They like what they hear.
Leftists express respectful disagreement with Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw over his criticism of Ilhan Omar. Ha, just kidding! They mocked him as “captain shithead, “Nazi,” and “eyeless fuck.”
What happens when the government turns your apartment building into public housing. “The SWAT team, the overdose, the complaints of pot smoke in the air and feces in the stairwell — it would be hard to pinpoint a moment when things took a turn for the worse at Sedgwick Gardens, a stately apartment building in Northwest Washington.” Bonus: they’re handing out vouchers for up to $2,648 a month, which is more than my mortgage payment. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
“The Trump administration on Wednesday imposed new sanctions and other punitive measures on Cuba and Venezuela, seeking to ratchet up U.S. pressure on Havana to end its support for Venezuela’s socialist president, Nicolas Maduro.” Good.
.WHY do people do people leave a poorly run, overtaxed state & then vote for liberals in Texas? Let Texas be Texas! Welcome to Texas. Don't vote for what you fled! Vote Republican this November. pic.twitter.com/O1lDuzOG5I
At long last, the FISA abuse/FBI spying on the Trump campaign scandal is finally being dragged into the light again. At the same time, Wikileaks head honcho Julian Assange has been extracted from the Ecuadorian embassy arrested, pending extradition to the U.S. Coincidence? I report, you decide. “The US department of justice confirmed he has been charged with computer crimes, and added in a statement that if convicted he will face up to five years in prison.” Dang dude, if he had turned himself in when indicted, he’d already be out by now and working the talk show circuit.
Enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm, and remember that you have to finish doing your taxes this weekend.
The baffling thing was why they were baffled. Barr’s statement was accurate and supported by publicly known facts.
First, what Barr said. “I think spying did occur,” he told the Senate Appropriations Committee. “But the question is whether it was adequately predicated. And I’m not suggesting it was not adequately predicated. But I need to explore that.”
That is entirely accurate. It is a fact that in October 2016 the FBI wiretapped Carter Page, who had earlier been a short-term foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign. The bureau’s application to a secret court for that wiretapping is public. It is heavily redacted but is clearly focused on Page and “the Russian government’s attempt to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.” Page was wiretapped because of his connection with the Trump campaign.
Some critics have noted that the wiretap authorization came after Page left the campaign. But the surveillance order allowed authorities to intercept Page’s electronic communications both going forward from the day of the order and backward, as well. Investigators could see Page’s emails and texts going back to his time in the campaign.
So there is simply no doubt that the FBI wiretapped a Trump campaign figure. Is a wiretap “spying”? It is hard to imagine a practice, whether approved by a court or not, more associated with spying.
Anyone reading this blog (or any non-MSM news source) knew that Obama’s Justice Department was spying on Trump over two years ago. At this point it’s about as surprising as hearing that James Harden is good at basketball…
Democrats seem both angry and frightened, and their kneejerk and perhaps even somewhat panicked response right now is to try to destroy Barr.
You can feel the frisson of fear they emanate. They waited two years for the blow of the Mueller report to fall on Trump, and now other investigative blows may fall on them. The Mueller report combined with Barr’s appointment could end up being a sort of ironic boomerang (whether or not boomerangs can be ironic I leave to you to decide).
How could this have happened? they must be thinking. How could the worm have turned? But they are spinning in the usual manner, hoping that—as so often has happened in the past—their confederates in the press will work their magic to make all of it go away and boomerang back to Republicans instead.
But whatever comes of it all, if anything, Democrats cannot believe that at least right now their dreams have turned to dust and they taste, instead of the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat.
That’s from Neo, formerly NeoNeocon. I can see why she’d want to change the name, given how many neocons became #NeverTrump lunatics. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
Newly released email from Platte River Networks, the firm that serviced the Emailgate server used by Hillary Clinton: “Its all part of the Hillary coverup operation.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Deeply sourced? What a laugh. As we now know post-Mueller Report, these “respected” journalists were simply trafficking in collusion lies whispered to them by biased informants. In other words, they were a bunch of gullible, over-zealous propagandists. For that they received their Pulitzers, as yet unreturned, needless to say (just as the Pulitzer for Walter Duranty still hangs on the NY Times’ wall despite decades of pleas from Ukrainians whose countrymen’s mass murder by Stalin was bowdlerized by Duranty).
So, in other words, these mainstream media reporters have gotten off with nary a slap on the wrist (indeed received fame and fortune) for lying while Julian Assange may be headed for prison for telling the truth. There’s a bit of irony in that, no?
Avenatti stole millions of dollars from five clients and used a tangled web of shell companies and bank accounts to cover up the theft, the Santa Ana grand jury alleged in an indictment that prosecutors made public Thursday.
One of the clients, Geoffrey Ernest Johnson, was a mentally ill paraplegic on disability who won a $4-million settlement of a suit against Los Angeles County. The money was wired to Avenatti in January 2015, but he hid it from Johnson for years, according to the indictment.
In 2017, Avenatti received $2.75 million in proceeds from another client’s legal settlement, but concealed that too, the indictment says. The next day, he put $2.5 million of that money into the purchase of a private jet for Passport 420, LLC, a company he effectively owned, according to prosecutors.
You can read the indictment itself here. Hey, remember the MSM treating Creepy Porn Lawyer like a rock star? Pepperidge Farm remembers:
Last year the media came down with a fever and the only cure was Michael Avenatti.
Forgot all about it? Well, for a trip down memory lane, please enjoy this supercut recapping some of the highlights. pic.twitter.com/OlKDftM8YA
When California Democratic Representative Ted Lieu went after Candace Owens, he probably had no idea he’d just make her star shine brighter. “She was a liberal, but during the #GamerGate controversy, she was ‘doxxed’ by the Left, and had a road-to-Damascus awakening: ‘I became a conservative overnight. I realized that liberals were actually the racists. Liberals were actually the trolls.'”
Wendy Davis is going to run for congress against Rep. Chip Roy. In one way this makes sense, as Roy narrowly won over Joseph Kopser by 2% in 2018. However, Kopser was (by Democratic standards) a well-heeled businessman moderate. I don’t actually see Abortion Barbie being nearly as competitive after the walloping she took in 2014. Also of interest is her running for an Austin-to-San Antonio district rather than somewhere near her previous base of Fort Worth. (I emailed the Kopser for Congress address to ask if he’s running again, but the contact address is no longer valid.)
Fritz Hollings, RIP. Hollings was one of the last conservative southern Democrats, and co-sponsor of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Deficit Reduction Act, which temporarily limited spending growth until congress gutted it in 1990.
“Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has warned China that his soldiers [are] occupying the island of Thitu in the South China Sea, which is currently surrounded by some 275 Chinese fishing militia and Coast Guard vessels.”
he core function of the Electoral College is to require presidential candidates to appeal to the voters of a sufficient number of large and smaller states, rather than just try to run up big margins in a handful of the biggest states, cities, or regions. Critics ignore the important value served by having a president whose base of support is spread over a broad, diverse array of regions of the country (even a president as polarizing as Donald Trump won seven of the ten largest states and places as diverse as Florida, Pennsylvania, Arizona, West Virginia, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Texas).
In a nation as wide and varied as ours, it would be destabilizing to have a president elected over the objections of most of the states. Our American system as a whole — both by design and by experience — demands the patient building of broad, diverse political coalitions over time to effect significant change. The presidency works together with the Senate and House to make that a necessity. The Senate, of course, is also a target of the Electoral College’s critics, but eliminating the equal suffrage of states requires the support of every single state. A president elected without regard to state support is more likely to face a dysfunctional level of opposition in the Senate.
Consider an illustrative example. Most of us, I think, would agree that 54 percent of the vote is a pretty good benchmark for a decisive election victory — not a landslide, but a no-questions-asked comfortable majority. That’s bigger than Donald Trump’s victory in Texas in 2016; Trump won 18 states with 54 percent or more of the vote in 2016, Hillary Clinton won 10 plus D.C., and the other 22 states were closer than that. Nationally, just 16 elections since 1824 have been won by a candidate who cleared 54 percent of the vote — the last was Ronald Reagan in 1984 — and all of them were regarded as decisive wins at the time.
Picture a two-candidate election with 2016’s turnout. The Republican wins 54 percent of the vote in 48 states, losing only California, New York, and D.C. That’s a landslide victory, right? But then imagine that the Republican nominee who managed this feat was so unpopular in California, New York, and D.C. that he or she loses all three by a 75 percent–to–25 percent margin. That 451–87 landslide in the Electoral College, built on eight-point wins in 48 states, would also be a popular-vote defeat, with 50.7 percent of the vote for the Democrat to 49.3 percent for the Republican. Out of a total of about 137 million votes, that’s a popular-vote margin of victory of 1.95 million votes for a candidate who was decisively rejected in 48 of the 50 states.
Who should win that election? This is not just a matter of coloring in a lot of empty red land on a map: each of these 48 states is an independent entity that has its own governor, legislature, laws, and courts, and sends two senators to Washington. The whole idea of a country called the United States is that those individual communities are supposed to matter.
Step 1: put on mask Step 2: pull out watergun loaded with something that LOOKS/SMELLS like bleach Step 3: spray said bleach-smelling liquid at face of Conservative speaker Step 4: suddenly have cops go all UFC on your asshttps://t.co/sEWwszmeOo
Is there any number of illegal border crossings into the United States that would strike Democrats as an emergency?
As they resisted President Trump’s efforts to stem the flow of illegal migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border, many Democrats made the point that fewer migrants are coming today than years ago, during the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush presidencies. The implication was that today’s situation cannot be an emergency, because it used to be worse.
That doesn’t make sense, of course. One could argue that crossings were an unaddressed emergency back then, and that today’s figures, although lower, also qualify as an emergency.
But now, the border numbers are surging back to the bad old days. It appears that Customs and Border Protection apprehended more than 100,000 people in March (the precise figure has not yet been released), a pace that could mean more than 1,000,000 apprehensions this year.
For some perspective: According to Border Patrol statistics, U.S. authorities caught 1,643,679 people trying to cross the border illegally from Mexico in fiscal 2000. In 2001 the number was 1,235,718. In 2002 it was 929,809. In 2003 it was 905,065. In 2004 it topped the million mark again, with 1,139,282. In 2005 it was 1,171,396. In 2006 it was 1,071,972.
The full text of the Mueller report is a booby-trap for the Democrats. And many of them not named Schiff must know or suspect it….The natural question will then be — what was all this for? Cui bono? A full airing of the report, what Nadler claims he wants, will instead “open the door,” as they say in court, more than ever for an investigation of why this probe was launched in the first place, by whom and for what reason. The results of that investigation will be quite scary, if not humiliating, for Democrats because they will lead close to, if not over, their highest doorstep — the portals of the Oval Office during the previous administration.
Snip.
Besides whatever Barr decides to do, several other vectors are pointing at the Democrats and their DOJ/FBI/media allies. One is obviously hearings from the Senate Judiciary Committee under chairman Lindsey Graham. The second is the investigation into the provenance of the Russia probe and the attendant FISA court decisions (Steele dossier, etc.) to spy on U.S. citizens by inspector general Michael Horowitz. He is supposed to be working in concert with John Huber, a U.S. attorney appointed by Jeff Sessions ages ago with the power to carry out in the courts the results of Horowitz’s discoveries and who has since been silent.
I noticed that the Russia narrative was increasingly being clung to as an explanation for the media’s failures to understand the country they purport to cover. I pushed back against the idea that the American people had been duped by “fake news” (which then meant something else entirely, we might remember) or “Russia” when they voted for Trump, even if such a vote was obviously unfathomable to most media figures.
The Russia strategy Clinton had deployed was being picked up by Obama’s intelligence agencies and spread far and wide by American media, and it annoyed Trump. When he’d dismiss the fevered theories that Russian meddling was the reason Hillary Clinton had failed to visit the upper Midwest, intelligence analysts responded by threatening him with leaks.
“Why Aren’t Democrats Winning the Hispanic Vote 80-20 or 90-10?” The assumption seems to be that Hispanic votes are a birthright for the Democratic Party, and their media partisans are perplexed that they’re not. “While many Democrats expected Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies, especially the family separation debacle, to produce a decisive shift to the left among Hispanics, that has not proved to be the case.” Why would Hispanic American citizens be any less worried about illegal alien crime or taking jobs than any other American group? (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Hey, remember when all those top Virginia Democrats were called on to resign? “Two of the three officials, Gov. Ralph Northam and Attorney General Mark Herring, wore blackface decades ago. The third, Lt. Gov Justin Fairfax, has been accused of two instances of sexual assault.” Well, they haven’t and they’re not. Evidently the press finally realized that each of them had (D)s after their name…
Chinese woman carrying malware arrested at Mar-a-Lago, President Trump’s frequent vacation home in Florida.
“Pence Issues Turkey Ultimatum: ‘Choose Between Remaining NATO Member Or Buying Russian S-400.’ I don’t think Erdogan’s Turkey should be kicked out of NATO for buying Russian anti-aircraft missiles, they should be kicked out of NATO for running a repressive jihadist scumbag regime. And we shouldn’t be selling them F-35s in any case.
“Trump Is Turning NATO Into a Viable Military Force.” “The Trump administration has made great strides in recent months to transform the cash-strapped and perpetually ailing North Atlantic Treaty Organization into a viable global military force that has the capabilities to confront Russia and other rogue regimes allied with terror forces.”
Some interesting maps showing American land use. (Hat tip: Gregory Benford on Facebook.)
Exhausted by a decade of rising disorder and property crime—now two-and-a-half times higher than Los Angeles’s and four times higher than New York City’s—Seattle voters may have reached the point of “compassion fatigue.” According to the Seattle Times, 53 percent of Seattle voters now support a “zero-tolerance policy” on homeless encampments; 62 percent believe that the problem is getting worse because the city “wastes money by being inefficient” and “is not accountable for how the money is spent,” and that “too many resources are spent on the wrong approaches to the problem.” The city council insists that new tax revenues are necessary, including a head tax on large employers, but only 7 percent of Seattle voters think that the city is “not spending enough to really solve the problem.” For a famously progressive city, this is a remarkable shift in public opinion.
Reporters have in mind a specific quote they’d like to have from you, and have developed great skill in teasing it out of people. Think of it as just one aspect of fake news. I had quite a bit of first-hand experience with this during my years in Washington, and I got good at spotting the technique and having the discipline not to give in to the usual reporter’s tricks. Often I’d get a call from a reporter wanting my comment on something the Bush Administration was doing, and the question, in substance, was usually: “Don’t you think the Bush Administration is doing the wrong thing?” (Though always more artfully put than that.) And when I didn’t give the answer the “reporter” was looking for, they’d keep asking the same question over and over again in different forms, because what they needed for their story was a way to say something like, “But even a conservative at the American Enterprise Institute thinks Bush is making a mistake. ‘Bush is making a mistake,’ said Steven Hayward. . .” Sometimes a reporter would keep me on the phone for 30 minutes or more, hoping I’d give in. I learned the discipline of never giving in to this trick, and what do you know? I was never quoted in any of the stories that “reporters” like this filed. Nor did any of the information or analysis I had about the issue make it into the story, because background information and perspective was not what the reporter was looking for.
Any attempt to discharge the moral crimes of the 18th and 19th centuries with monetary payments in the 21st century is doomed to fail. The logistical and definitional obstacles alone would be a nightmare. The majority of white Americans have no ancestral link to antebellum slavery — they are descendants of the millions of immigrants who came to the United States after slavery had been abolished. Of the remainder, few had any slaveholding forbears: Slavery was abolished in most Northeastern states within 15 years of the American Revolution, while in most of the West it never existed at all. Even in the South at the peak of its “slaveocracy,” at least 75 percent of whites never owned slaves.
That’s just where the complications start. To whom would reparations be owed? Millions of black Americans are recent immigrants or the children of those immigrants, and have no family link to slavery. Are they entitled to compensation for what slaves endured? How about whites whose ancestors were slaves? Or blacks descended from slaveholders? What of the 1.8 million biracial people who identified themselves in the last Census as both black and white? Should they expect to collect reparations, or to pay them?
Almost did a post on all the Unplanned Twitter shenanigans. Basically: Twitter briefly suspends, and then farks with, the Twitter account for a pro-life movie. If you followed it, Twitter would automatically unfollow the account. The shenanigans stopped when enough people noticed, with the result that not only did Unplanned land in the top five for box office that week, but now their Twitter account has far more followers than Planned Parenthood’s official Twitter account. This suggests that a half-century worth of preference falsification by the abortion industry and their media allies is finally falling apart.
If you thought Joe Don Baker’s Mitchell was a bad cop, you haven’t met this one.
MS-13 member on Texas Ten Most Wanted list captured. Seven of the ten are listed as “White (Hispanic) Male” and an eighth is named “Jesus Alberto Villegas.” It doesn’t say (at least on that page) how many are illegal aliens. In other news, Texas has its own Top Ten Most Wanted List.
Gramsci argued that the Bolshevik Russian revolution of 1917 worked because the conditions were ripe for such a sudden upheaval. He described the Russian revolution as an example of a “war of movement” due to its sudden and complete overthrow of the existing governing structure of society. Gramsci reasoned that in Russia in 1917, “the state was everything, civil society was primordial and gelatinous.”
As such, a direct attack on the current rulers could be effective because there existed no other significant structure or institutions of political influence that needed to be overcome.
In Western societies, by contrast, Gramsci observed that the state is “only an outer ditch” behind which lies a robust and sturdy civil society.
Gramsci believed that the conditions in Russia in 1917 that made revolution possible would not materialize in more advanced capitalist countries in the West. The strategy must be different and must include a mass democratic movement, an ideological struggle.
His advocacy of a war of position instead of a war of movement was not a rebuke of revolution itself, just a differing tactic—a tactic that required the infiltration of influential organizations that make up civil society. Gramsci likened these organizations to the “trenches” in which the war of position would need to be fought.
The massive structures of the modern democracies, both as state organizations, and as complexes of associations in civil society, constitute for the art of politics as it were the “trenches” and the permanent fortifications of the front in the war of position: they render merely “partial” the element of maneuver which before used the “the whole” of war, etc.
Gramsci argued that a “frontal attack” on established institutions like governments in Western societies may face significant resistance and thus need greater preparation—with the main groundwork being the development of a collective will among the people and a takeover of leadership among civil society and key political positions.
Snip.
Gramsci, however, viewed civil society in Western societies to be a strong defensive system for the current State, which in turn existed to protect the interest of the capitalist class.
“In the West, there was a proper relation between state and civil society, and when the state trembled a sturdy structure of civil society was at once revealed. The state was only an outer ditch, behind which there stood a powerful system of fortresses and earthworks,” he wrote. In short, in times when the state itself may have shown weakness to overthrow from opposing ideological forces, the institutions of civil society provided political reinforcement for the existing order.
In his view, a new collective will is required to advance this war of position for the revolution. To him, it is vital to evaluate what can stand in the way of this will, i.e. certain influential social groups with the prevailing capitalist ideologies that could impede this progress.
Gramsci spoke of organizations including churches, charities, the media, schools, universities and “economic corporate” power as organizations that needed to be invaded by socialist thinkers.
The new dictatorship of the proletariat in the West, according to Gramsci, could only arise out of an active consensus of the working masses—led by those critical civil society organizations generating an ideological hegemony.
As Gramsci described it, hegemony means “cultural, moral and ideological” leadership over allied and subordinate groups. The intellectuals, once ensconced, should attain leadership roles over these groups’ members by consent. They would achieve direction over the movement by persuasion rather than domination or coercion.
The goal of the war of position is to shape a new collective will of the masses in order to weaken the defenses that civil society provides to the current capitalist state.
Now I have an excuse to embed this:
“CNN Blames Ratings Slump On Lack Of News They Want To Report.” “It’s perfectly natural to see a little bit of a dip in ratings when your entire narrative is being destroyed and you’d rather just not talk about it,” Stelter added. “All part of the business.”
You know that whole “We’ve got to drop rote memorization and teach critical thinking!” thing? It’s not just bunk, it’s really old bunk. “Memorization and practice are still essential elements of learning and prepare students for the kind of higher level thinking we all claim to value.”
Have I ever shared The Worst Web Page In History with you before? If not, behold the abomination in all its glory! (Or rather, a snapshot of the page as it existed in 2005.) Bonus: it’s from a radical leftist! (Warning: Everything!)
All remaining criminal cases will be dismissed from the 2015 Twin Peaks biker shootout that left nine dead and 20 injured, prosecutors said Tuesday, ending a four-year prosecutorial fiasco that resulted in zero convictions.
McLennan County District Attorney Barry Johnson said he will dismiss the remaining 24 criminal cases to “end this nightmare that we have been dealing with in this county since May 17, 2015.”
Johnson’s decision means no one will be held accountable for killing and injuring bikers or for engaging in a chaotic battle in a shopping center parking lot in front of a Sunday lunchtime crowd.
“There were nine people who were killed on that fateful day in Waco, Texas, and 20 injured, all of whom were members of rival motorcycle clubs/gangs, and the loss of life is a difficult thing,” Johnson said. “But after looking over the 24 cases we were left with, it is my opinion as your district attorney that we are not able to prosecute any of those cases and reach our burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Johnson inherited the Twin Peaks cases when he took office in January, and said he has spent 75 percent of his time since then with a team of prosecutors and investigators trying to determine how to resolve the remaining cases.
About 200 bikers were arrested after the shootout on identical charges of engaging in organized criminal activity and held on $1 million bonds each. Former McLennan County District Attorney Abel Reyna sought indictments against 155 bikers on those identical charges and chose to try Jacob Carrizal, the Bandidos Dallas county chapter president, first.
Carrizal’s case, tried in Waco’s 54th State District Court, ended in mistrial in November 2017, with most of the jurors in his case favoring acquittal. No other defendant has been tried since.
Johnson’s campaign hammered Reyna for his handling of the Twin Peaks cases, and he won the March 2018 Republican primary by 20 percentage points. After the primary, Reyna dismissed all but 24 of the remaining Twin Peaks cases.
Johnson probably made the right call here, as Reyna cocked things up so badly by refusing to charge individual bikers with individual crimes, choosing instead to charge almost every biker arrested with “conspiracy,” evidently operating on an unconstitutional theory of collective guilt. At least some of the dead appear to have been killed by police rifles, and there are reports of law enforcement officials failing to render aid to the wounded.
Thanks to Abel Reyna, multiple people got away with murder, while over a hundred people got arrested, and had their lives destroyed, not for actually committing any crimes, but simply for wearing the wrong colors and being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
What use is April Fools Day when there are so many fools to choose from? That aside, Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam is In, while Biden continues his Hamlet routine. (Given what last week’s Mueller-Avenatti-Smollett smashup was like, I don’t really blame him anyone for not launching their campaign last week.) Eric Swalwell was do disappointed by the Mueller report that he’s going to run for President to ease the pain, sort of like sawing off your own leg to make you forget a toothache. There’s a little Buttigieg boomlet going on. And with the quarter just ended, fundraising totals are starting to trickle out.
Polls
A Quinnipiac national poll has it Biden 29, Sanders 19, O’Rourke 12, Harris 8, and Warren and Buttigieg in a distant fifth tied at 4% each. Most interesting tidbit? O’Roruke has double Harris’ support among black people, and ties it among women.
An Emerson Iowa poll had it Biden 25, Sanders 24, Buttigieg 11, Harris at 10, with Warren, Booker and O’Rourke trailing in single digits.
America’s youngest voters prefer the oldest 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls over those closer to them in age, and millennial women are showing little problem with former Vice President Joe Biden’s personally touchy style that has drawn the scorn of some #MeToo champions, according to a new survey.
The Harvard Youth Poll found that Sen. Bernie Sanders, 77, and Biden, 76, top the choices of voters aged 18-29.
Sanders leads Biden 31 percent to 20 percent, said the survey from the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy’s School.
Notably, one of the youngest Democratic candidates, former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, registered just 10 percent. But that makes him the third top choice of the younger voters.
Losing Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams: Maybe? “Stacey Abrams builds massive political network ahead of 2020 decision.” “Stacey Abrams is set to reveal soon whether she’ll run for president or senator or something else. But in recent months, the Democrat has mounted a nationwide, largely below-the-radar effort to expand her donor and political network that will make her an instant force whatever she decides.” She also ruled out preemptively agreeing to be Biden’s VP.
Joe Biden is a creepy old goat. Everyone knows this. There is much photographic evidence of him crossing the line with women. He’s also a liar and a buffoon. But the Democratic party’s public-relations arm, aka the mainstream media, has never before had any incentive to hold Biden up to scrutiny. Why bother? When he became veep, any attack on Biden risked looking like casting aspersions on the man who made him his number two, and the media could not countenance any naysaying about the judgment of the Precious.
Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro: In. Twitter. Facebook. He was in Ft. Dodge, Iowa. Back in January, Jim Geraghty noted: “Julián Castro was the candidate of tomorrow, and always will be.” It also included this tidbit:
In 2012, Rosie Castro caused her son a bit of a headache when she told The New York Times Magazine that the Texans at the Alamo were “a bunch of drunks and crooks and slaveholding imperialists who conquered land that didn’t belong to them…I can truly say that I hate that place and everything it stands for.” It’s not often you see a mayor’s mother trashing the city’s most famous historical site.
Former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: Out.
Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Tulsi Gabbard Says It’s Time to ‘Move Forward’ After Trump-Russia Investigation.” “Now that Mueller has reported that his investigation revealed no such collusion, we all need to put aside our partisan interests and recognize that finding that the president of the United States did not conspire with Russia to interfere with our elections is a good thing for our country.” Yeah, I bet that stance is going to make her super popular among Democratic primary voters…
Former Tallahassee Mayor and failed Florida Senate candidate Andrew Gillum: Probably not. “Unless somebody I know who inspires me on a regular basis decides to do something else, he’d be focusing all his energy on getting Florida voters registered and turning the state blue in 2020.” Downgrade from Maybe.
California Senator Kamala Harris: In. Twitter. Facebook. Harris is popular with her California constituents…but not super-popular, and the state doles out delegates proportionally. Interestingly, left-leaning PolitiFact said that her assertion that President Trump was raiding money from soldier pensions was false. And speaking of Jussie Smollett:
I’m so excited that @KamalaHarris has decided to run for president. I would not be where I am today without her guidance during my first run for political office, and she has continued to mentor me as I work to reform the criminal justice system in Cook County. —KF pic.twitter.com/O241FGKKMs
Virginia Senator and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Vice Presidential running mate Tim Kaine: Out.
Former Obama Secretary of State and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry: Not seeing any sign.
Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar: In. Facebook. Twitter. She visited Iowa to check out flooding damage. “There are half a dozen Democrats running for president who fill VFW halls or city squares or public parks. Klobuchar is not one of those Democrats. Her audiences are rapt and curious but small. Her Friday night visit to Council Bluffs, which took place in the same venue and time of day as Warren’s first visit to the city, attracted 75 people.” She also unveiled an very expensive infrastructure plan. How expensive?
In the first speech of his presidential campaign, Miramar Mayor Wayne Messam on Saturday said he’s aiming to “give Americans a second chance at the American Dream.”
The 44-year-old son of Jamaican immigrants said his top priorities are greatly reducing gun violence and preventing mass shootings, eliminating college loan debt, reversing harmful climate change, and rebuilding ties with America’s allies across the planet.
“We will meet this challenge,” Messam told the crowd at the Lou Rawls Center for the Performing Arts at Florida Memorial University in Miami Gardens. He used the “Black Panther” movie song “Pray for Me” as his theme music.
With all of five thousand twitter followers, Messam takes the longest of longshots crown from John Delaney. However, as a black mayor with a compelling personal story, the media will be unable to ignore him as they’ve largely ignored Delany, no matter how much Harris and Booker campaigns might wish they would. And the inevitable Obama comparisons won’t hurt, though I don’t see him having anything near that magnetism. Florida’s primary is March 17, fairly early but after Super Tuesday, and it’s possible that Messam’s favorite son bid could make some noise there, especially if Gillum doesn’t jump into the race.
Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton: Maybe? Yet another guy who says he’ll decide in the next few weeks.
California Representative Eric Swalwell: All But In. He told an audience he was announcing in two weeks. Maybe he can spend his Presidential campaign looking for the real Russian colluders. (Upgrade from Maybe.)
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren: In. Twitter. Facebook. She just lost her financing manager. “Her staff is sensitive enough about the “but can she win” concerns that last week it issued a lengthy campaign memo, in the guise of a fund-raising email, detailing her platform and resume while offering a reminder that she is the only candidate who in recent years has defeated a statewide Republican incumbent.” Yeah, in Massachusetts, which for a Democrat is like Kramer beating up 9-year olds in his karate class.
Say hello to Marianne Williamson, a best-selling author who has often been called Oprah Winfrey’s “spiritual guru.” Although she isn’t even a single-digit blip in the national polls, Ms. Williamson’s campaign has already been featured on ABC’s Nightline, and her campaign appearances in Iowa and New Hampshire have received respectful coverage in such local media as the Des Moines Register and the Concord Monitor. Her only previous foray into electoral politics was a fourth-place finish in a 16-candidate California congressional race in 2014, but Ms. Williamson seems to have learned a lot in the past five years. Her campaign website is state-of-the-art, her calendar of public appearances is carefully targeted toward the early primary and caucus states, and she has already hired state campaign directors in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. “We’re getting traction,” Williamson campaign spokeswoman Patricia Ewing told me in a brief telephone interview Thursday. “We’re very happy with it.”
Ms. Ewing said the campaign is “confident” Ms. Williamson will surpass the crucial metric of 65,000 unique donors that the Democratic National Committee has established as the threshold to participate in the first televised debates. She already has more than 25,000 donors, Ms. Ewings said. “It’s not a stress point for us at all. We know we’re going to hit the numbers by the time the DNC wants us to.” Ms. Williamson has spent more than 30 years making public appearances to promote her popular books and, before launching her current campaign, went on a 75-city national tour with an average of 500 people attending each event, Ms. Ewing said. Do the math, and that adds up to nearly 40,000 dedicated supporters. Given how easily an “outsider” candidate like Trump vanquished a field of Republican politicians in the 2016 primaries, it’s not impossible that Ms. Williamson could pull off a similar feat among Democrats in 2020. “We believe that a presidential candidate can come from someone who is not a career politician,” Ms. Ewing said. “Someone who has an understanding of the breadth and width of the country.”
For all the talk about the Religious Right’s role in Republican politics, little attention is paid to the influence among Democrats of the Religious Left, of which Ms. Williamson is a recognized leader. And if the odds against her winning her party’s 2020 presidential nomination are a million-to-one, there are nonetheless serious Democrats who believe she can achieve such a miracle. One of them is Dr. Gloria Bromell Tinubu, state director of the Williamson campaign. An experienced politician who served in the Georgia legislature before returning to her native South Carolina, Dr. Tinubu was twice the Democratic nominee for Congress in the 7th District, getting more than 100,000 votes against Republican Rep. Tom Rice in this deep “red” district. Dr. Tinubu introduced Ms. Williamson at Bethel A.M.E. by saying, “I consider her a sister,” which is about as strong an endorsement as any Democrat needs here.
Snip.
If the “Three B’s” (Biden, Bernie, and Beto) are Trump’s “dream” of a 2020 opponent, Ms. Williamson might just be his worst nightmare. Like him, she’s an outsider, a non-politician without the kind of political baggage that sank Hillary Clinton. And she brings to the campaign a spiritual vibe that could connect with swing voters. “Politics should not be a pursuit disconnected from the heart,” her campaign literature proclaims. “Where fear has been harnessed for political purposes, let’s now harness the power of love.” Sure, conservative readers will roll their eyes at that kind of emotional appeal, but what about suburban “soccer moms”? What about the millions of women who’ve bought Ms. Williamson’s books or seen her many TV appearances with Oprah? What about the congregation at Bethel A.M.E. that applauded Ms. Williamson’s call for reparations for slavery?
All the same pundits who confidently predicted Trump’s defeat would say it is impossible Ms. Williamson could win the Democrats’ 2020 nomination, and that’s the really spooky thing. We are living in a world where impossible things seem to be happening with remarkable frequency, and it’s foolish to say miracles never happen. How odd was it, after all, that Ms. Williamson was speaking Sunday from the pulpit of a black church in South Carolina? Not only is she white, she’s Jewish. (To quote New York Jewish Week: “Should she win the presidency, Williamson, 66, not only would be the first woman president but the first Jewish one.”) She mentioned the Jewish celebration of Purim, which commemorates Esther’s role in saving the Jews of Persia. She didn’t mention the famous question Mordecai asked of Esther: “Who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” Indeed, who knows? In such a time as this, perhaps Ms. Williamson could be the miracle that saves Democrats from themselves.
This week in the clown car update: Two more additions, one possibly serious, the other definitely not. Also, don’t miss yesterday’s post on the Twitter primary.
Polls and Pundits
Fox poll has Biden at 31, Sanders at 24, and both beating Trump, with everyone else in single digits and losing to Trump.
James Pindell of the Boston Globe ranks the Democratic presidential field in New Hampshire. TLDR: Sanders, Biden, Warren, Harris, Booker, O’Rourke, Williamson, Gabbard, Buttigieg, Yang. Yes, he has Williamson and Yang ahead of numerous “serious” candidates.
Losing Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams: Maybe?Still considering a run. Also see Biden comma Joe.
Creepy Porn Lawyer Michael Avenatti: Out. But he did pen an op-ed stating that Beto O’Rourke can’t win. “It’s not Beto’s fault he’s not a fighter. After all, he’s led a very charmed, privileged life as a white male. He’s faced very little adversity.” Seems like the Creepy Porn Lawyer is calling the kettle white…
Colorado Senator Michael Bennet: Leaning Toward In. “U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet is taking the final steps toward becoming the second Colorado Democrat in the 2020 race for president, with a possible announcement coming soon, sources familiar with his plan have told The Denver Post.”
Former Vice President Joe Biden: Leaning Towards Running. Trial balloon floated the idea of him announcing for the campaign and naming Stacey Abrams as his running mate right out of the gate. Not sure that would help clinch the nomination with two (or, see below, three) actual black candidates in the race. Lots of pundits are pronouncing this to be a bad idea, but how many are in the tank for Kamala Harris? Jim Geraghty: “Nominating Biden atop the Democratic ticket is like giving the wacky neighbor supporting character on a beloved show his own spinoff.” Could Biden be the Jeb Bush of 2020?
Maryland Representative John Delaney: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gets an ABC profile that notes “Delaney has made Iowa his primary focus. He’s traveled to 99 counties and was planning to open six offices in the first state that will have a say in the election. His time in Iowa reportedly earned him early endorsements from three Iowan Democratic Party county chairs.” Probably the only candidate in the field emphasizing bipartisanship.
Former Tallahassee Mayor and failed Florida Senate candidate Andrew Gillum: Maybe? This week Gillum announced…a voter registration drive.
Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel: Maybe, but it’s a joke run. He lost to everyone in 2008, coming in eight out of eight and receiving no delegates, then switched to the Libertarian Party, where he came in four out of eight. According to his Twitter account: “I’m not planning to contest any primaries and, if offered the nomination, would decline it.” The 88-year old did make an FEC filing, but I’m only listing him here to mention that I’m not listing him here…
California Senator Kamala Harris: In. Twitter. Facebook. She swung through Texas and compared herself to LBJ, which suggests she’s a mean, corrupt political operator who used voting fraud to steal an election. “Black women could help boost Kamala Harris’ presidential aspirations.” Wow, there’s an original thought. But the whispers I hear suggests that Homewrecker Harris is far less popular among black women than you might expect…
Washington Governor Jay Inslee: In. Twitter. Facebook. Appeared on The Daily Show. Inslee’s extra security for his presidential run will cost Washington state $4 million. Wait, don’t you actually have to know who someone is before you target him for assassination?
Virginia Senator and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Vice Presidential running mate Tim Kaine: Out.
Former Obama Secretary of State and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry: Not seeing any sign. But he did get 4% in that CNN poll.
Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar: In. Facebook. Twitter. US News and World Report (who are evidently still around) cover the “humor” of Klobuchar. Judging from the samples provided, I don’t see her headlining at The Laugh Factory anytime soon…
Former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe: Leaning toward a run? He gets a Washington Post profile. “When he left office in January 2018, McAuliffe appeared to be well positioned for a White House run as a socially liberal, business-friendly Democrat from an important swing state. But 14 months later, it’s unclear if there is room for McAuliffe, 62, in a party that seems to be pulling leftward.”
Oregon senator Jeff Merkley: Out. Filing for reelection to the senate instead.
Addition Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam: Leaning Toward In. Twitter. Stumbled across him on Wikipedia. He’s filed paperwork with the SEC and is expected to make an announcement March 30. He was also a wide receiver at Florida State and a member of their 1993 National Championship team. Do I consider the 44-year old a serious contender? Right now, no. But as of 2010, Miramar had a population of 122,041, compared to South Bend, Indiana’s 101,168. By what objective criteria is Sound Bend’s white gay mayor Pete Buttigieg a legitimate Presidential contender and Miramar’s black, straight (presumably, since he’s married with three children) mayor isn’t? (Even 538 is keeping track of him, and made the same point about Buttigieg.)
Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton: Maybe? Says he’ll decide by next month.
Former Texas Representative and failed Senatorial candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke: In. Twitter. Facebook. Two Jim Geraghty pieces: Beto finds that that everything seems a lot harder when you’re not running against Ted Cruz. “All of a sudden Beto O’Rourke, the candidate who was most beloved by the national press in 2018, is getting brutal coverage in 2019.” But then he warns Republicans not to underestimate him and compares his career path to George W. Bush. There are some parallels there, but it’s a big leap from the congressional son of a city councilman to the gubernatorial son of a President. He campaigned in South Carolina. Wait, he’s now saying he’s a gun owner? Did he mention that when he was bragging about his F rating from the NRA last year? Whoa ho here he comes, he’s a dirt eater.
New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Constitutionally ineligible to run in 2020.
As it stands in the New Hampshire primary, there’s Sanders and then everyone else. No one even comes close to the level of support, energy, and commitment that Sanders has enjoyed since he won the New Hampshire primary with 60 percent of the vote in 2016.
Now here’s the downside of expectations: mathematically, his numbers can go only go down in a field this large. But even with polls putting him at 25 percent to 30 percent support in the state’s primary, that’s enough to win in such a large field.
Journalist David Sirota spent the last few months attacking all the non-Sanders Democrats in the race. Surprise! Bernie just hired him. Sanders also spoke to large crowds in San Francisco (of course) and San Diego.
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren: In. Twitter. Facebook. In Politico, Jeff Greenfield ponders her slow start. “She is languishing in fifth place in a spate of polls of Democratic primary voters; Bernie Sanders and Beto O’Rourke are dominating the money race.” Oh, and she wants to eliminate the Electoral College because of course she does.
Yes, a person most readers will have to Google is already well ahead of sitting senators, Cabinet officials, and former governors in the New Hampshire rankings. Don’t believe me? Just look at the overflow crowds of people who adore her and probably won’t even consider voting for anyone else. It’s clear by these counts that Williamson, Oprah Winfrey’s spiritual adviser, enters the race with her own base of support. Also, it turned a lot of heads when former congressman Paul Hodes agreed to run her campaign in the state.
She gets an intermittantly interesting Buzzfeed profile that talks about all her celebrity spiritualist boosters (Steve Tyler, Gwyneth Paltro, Cher, Kim Kardashian West) and officiating at one of Elizabeth Taylor’s weddings, while showing her speaking before an audience of six. Robert Stacy McCain needs your donations so he can travel to South Carolina to give the Williamson campaign the coverage it deserves in person. Help make it happen! (And here’s an update.)
Talk show host Oprah Winfrey: Out.
Venture capitalist Andrew Yang: Running but no one cares. Twitter. Facebook. He’s in the debates! Yang has lots of ideas, most of them bad. He wants to reformulate GDP: “Robot trucks are going to be great for GDP, but they’re going to be terrible for the 3 1/2 billion [sic] truck drivers in the country.” He’s also come out against the most pressing issue of our day: circumcision. Though I suspect there’s no truth to the rumor he’ll make his official campaign song Pink Floyd’s “The Final Cut”…
Hope you’re enjoying the spring weather! This week: Jexodus, Clinton emails (yet again), and a fair amount about aircraft. Enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm:
President Donald Trump calls for recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Since Israeli has controlled the Golan Heights for more than half a century, this would not be a radical and surprising move were it not for much of the world’s (and the Democratic Party’s) antipathy to the Jewish state. Expect liberal Jewish Democrats (see below) to fiercely condemn the move…
For those of us who consider Chelsea Clinton a cringe-inducing banality, that she could be accused of anything so momentous, never mind a racist slaughter in the Antipodes, was puzzling indeed. And so it was with great curiosity that I read the Buzzfeed piece in which the pair explain their actions. In it, they accuse Clinton of having “stoked hatred against” all Muslims, everywhere, with a single tweet criticizing just a single one, Ilhan Omar. When the Democratic congresswoman complained about lawmakers being forced to pledge “allegiance to a foreign country,” she wasn’t repeating a hoary anti-Semitic trope which has instigated all manner of desecrations and violent attacks and pogroms. No, according to these NYU coeds, exemplars of American higher education as impressive as those Yale students who screamed at a distinguished professor for hours over Halloween costumes, Omar was “speaking the truth about the massive influence of the Israel lobby in this country.”
It is Rep. Omar who is the victim here. “Chelsea hurt our fight against white supremacy when she stood by the petty weaponizers of antisemitism, showing no regard for Rep. Omar and the hatred being directed at her,” Asaf and Dweik declared. English translation: People who are left wing, Muslim or “of color” cannot be anti-Semites, and those who say otherwise will be condemned as handmaidens of Jim Crow. This is especially true if the person in question is, like IIhan Omar, all three.
Reading the many progressive identity-based defenses of Omar, which repeatedly and pointlessly invoke the fact that she is a hijabi-wearing black refugee being criticized by a white native-born American woman, one gets the impression that this particular legislator can pretty much say whatever she wants and expect to be absolved for it: Her canonization as a left-wing hero is necessary, and irrevocable.
Omar can’t be an anti-Semite because members of “marginalized” groups are inherently virtuous. This is the ultimate logic of identity politics. Jussie Smollett just had to be telling the truth; he is black and gay and progressive and his purported assailants were white and straight and wearing MAGA hats. But when Asaf and Dweik insist that she “did nothing wrong except challenge the status quo,” they are taking the side of anti-Semites over Jews. They are normalizing anti-Semitism.
They are not the only ones. For a growing number of progressives, anti-Semitism has become an ideological obligation as central to their political identity as the Universal Basic Income, Green New Deal, a 70-percent marginal tax rate, and free higher education. These progressives, of course, cannot openly say this. Anti-Semitism is bad. Some of their best friends are Jews. The Holocaust happened. So they need to redefine anti-Semitism out of existence, while redistributing the valuable cultural capital of Jewish historical suffering to more deserving groups. Thus, the phenomena of “white Jews.”
However, I think the author misses one obvious reason Democrats pander to Muslims: They’ve decided they need their votes more than they need Jewish votes, therefore Jews are expendable in order to keep the victimhood identity politics coalition together.
The negative Jexodus will be the aftermath of a radicalization that splits the Democrats, as it did Labour in the UK along dividing lines of militant socialism, Islamism, and anti-Semitism. These three ‘isms’ will split Jewish Democrats alone those same lines leaving the radicals on the inside and moderates outside. Those Jews who remain will be required to prove their loyalty by denouncing Jews and Israel. These demands will be put forward in the stridently anti-Semitic tones commonplace on the fringes of the Left.
The 2020 season is just getting started and the Sanders campaign’s deputy press secretary, an illegal alien, already accused Jews of being disloyal, and Elizabeth Warren issued a statement in defense of Rep. Omar accusing Jews of inventing anti-Semitism accusations to silence criticism of Israel. It’s no coincidence that these overt shows of anti-Semitism are coming from the leftiest figures in the race.
And it will only get worse.
Jewish lefties have a high degree of tolerance for anti-Semitism. But ultimately the only Jews who will be able to remain in the Dem ranks will have very thick skins and career ambitions, like Chuck Schumer, harbor a complicated mix of shame and hatred for Jewishness, like Bernie Sanders, or have no connection to anything Jewish beyond their last names, like your average millennial Obama official.
The Democrats have shown no ability to moderate their extremist drift. The movements pushing them leftward are, like the Democratic Socialists of America, openly supportive of anti-Semitism.
That’s the easiest case to make for Jexodus because the Democrats will be the ones to make it.
Jews will exit the Dems voluntarily or they will be forced out.
Snip.
Jewish Democrats have responded to the outbreak of anti-Semitism with the usual nebbish excuses, blaming Israel, Netanyahu, and the ‘politicization of anti-Semitism”. But socialist movements were anti-Semitic before Zionism and Jesse Jackson was slurring Jews as ‘hymies’ long before Netanyahu.
Israel is a convenient excuse for anti-Semitism, not only by anti-Semites, but by their Jewish apologists who are eager to exercise a sense of control over a hatred that cannot be controlled, by taking the blame. And then placing it as far away as possible, on another country thousands of miles away.
The anti-Semites blame the Jews. The Jews blame Israel. And nothing is learned from the experience.
Speaking of Clinton, in “newly revealed emails, [she] discussed classified foreign policy matters, secretive ‘private’ comms channel with Israel.” That is to say, emails from her secret, illegal, unsecured server, which means that back-channel might not have been so “private” after all. I might have to restart the Clinton Corruption Watch updates. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
The liberal consensus, then, has emerged as a profoundly illiberal, repressive force—precisely because it grants the autonomous individual such wide berth to define what is good and true. If maximizing individual autonomy is the highest good and, indeed, the very purpose of political community, then for Chelsea Manning to exercise “her” autonomy requires the state to compel the rest of us to say that “she” wasn’t born male. And even absent state compulsion, as already exists in Canada and elsewhere, the institutions charged with upholding the consensus—corporations, big tech, universities, and elite media—can exact a high price for dissent.
Snip.
In Europe and, to a lesser extent, in the U.S., raising a peep about unrestricted mass migration was treated as phobic. Likewise, the guardians of the consensus drummed out of the public square those who questioned the wisdom of replicating the West’s political forms in societies shaped by history, and countless other factors, to favor order, community, and authority over individual autonomy. On the home front, economic growth, interconnectedness, and openness were treated as the only ideals worthy of the name.
We’re hanging our whole maritime strategy in the Pacific Ocean around a few of these big, super-expensive iron airfields. If a carrier battle group (a carrier rolls with a posse like an old school rapper) gets within aircraft flight range of an enemy, then the enemy will have a bad day. So, what’s the super-obvious counter to our carrier strategy? Well, how about a bunch of relatively cheap missiles with a longer range than the carrier’s aircraft? And – surprise – what are the Chinese doing? Building a bunch of hypersonic and ballistic anti-ship missiles to pummel our flattops long before the F-35s and F-18s can reach the Chinese mainland. We know this because the Chinese are telling us they intend to do it, with the intent of neutering our combat power and breaking our will to fight by causing thousands of casualties in one fell swoop.
The vulnerability of our carriers is no surprise; the Navy has been warned about it for years. There are a number of ideas out there to address the issue, but the Navy resists. One good one is to replace the limited numbers of (again) super-expensive, short-range manned aircraft with a bunch more long range drones. Except that means the Naval aviation community would have to admit the Top Gun era is in the past, and that’s too hard. So they buy a bunch of pricy, shiny manned fighters that can’t get the job done.
Speaking of fighting the last war, the Air Force plans to buy more F-15Xs and less F-35s, supposedly because the non-stealthy F-15X can carry more weapons and work with F35s to deliver more ordinance. The F-35 has its issues, but this is probably the wrong decision. The Air Force still hasn’t figured out an optimal 21st century platform for carrying out close air support, a mission that institutionally has been among the least favored of its priorities.
Offutt Air Force Base sits near Omaha, the home of the Strategic Air Command and several vital aircraft, was affected by the recent flooding.
The Russian Navy is in trouble. After years of coasting on the largesse of the Cold War, Russia’s navy is set to tumble in size and relevance over the next two decades. Older ships and equipment produced for the once-mighty Soviet Navy are wearing out and the country can’t afford to replace them.
Snip.
Russia’s economy, flat on its back for more than a decade, started to claw back in the mid-2000s, thanks in large part to spiking oil prices. Today Russia is the fourth largest spender on defense worldwide. In 2017, the earliest year in which comparisons are possible, Russia’s gross domestic product amounted to $1.5 trillion dollars, of which it spent 4.3 percent on defense. That works out to $66.3 billion for Moscow’s war machine, trailing only the United States, China, and Saudi Arabia (yes, Saudi Arabia spends more on defense than Russia).
Snip.
Today, 28 years after the end of the Soviet Union, Russia still relies mostly on Soviet-era ships. The country’s sole aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, has suffered from repeated mechanical problems and should be, but probably won’t be, retired immediately. Russia has built no cruisers since 1991, relying on the five impressive-but-aging Kirov and Slava-class cruisers to act as the country’s major surface combatants. Russia has built only one destroyer since the Cold War, the Admiral Chabanenko. Chabanenko was laid down in 1989 and commissioned into service in 1999.
Likewise, most of Russia’s submarine fleet still consists of Soviet-era submarines, including Delta-class ballistic missile submarines, Oscar-class cruise missile submarines, and Akula, Sierra, Victor, and Kilo-class attack submarines, which have been in service for so long they are still referred to by the code names they were given in Soviet service.
Key Democratic operatives and private investigators who tried to derail Donald Trump’s campaign by claiming he was a tool of the Kremlin have rebooted their operation since his election with a multimillion-dollar stealth campaign to persuade major media outlets and lawmakers that the president should be impeached.
The effort has successfully placed a series of questionable stories alleging secret back channels and meetings between Trump associates and Russian spies, while influencing related investigations and reports from Congress.
The operation’s nerve center is a Washington-based nonprofit called The Democracy Integrity Project, or TDIP. Among other activities, it pumps out daily “research” briefings to prominent Washington journalists, as well as congressional staffers, to keep the Russia “collusion” narrative alive.
TDIP is led by Daniel J. Jones, a former FBI investigator, Clinton administration volunteer and top staffer to California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein. It employs the key opposition-research figures behind the salacious and unverified dossier: Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson and ex-British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. Its financial backers include the actor/director Rob Reiner and billionaire activist George Soros.
Speaking of Soros, here’s a list of all the left-wing oprganizations Soros funds, over 200 of them. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Brexit slightly delayed. Probably until April 12. At which time Theresa May and the EU will probably find some other excuse to delay it again…
The MSM continues to lie about president Trump’s Charlottesville remarks. Scott Adams has been noting this for a long time:
As one can see from the transcript, Trump excluded the Charlottesville racists from the “fine people” category and condemned them totally and specifically. This is typically reported without the bottom part. pic.twitter.com/YQlvYd9R5j
Democrats have floated radical proposals designed only to appeal to the far-left progressive wing of the party. Those ideas include stacking the Supreme Court or, at the very least, implementing term limits for justices; pushing for a constitutional amendment to end the electoral college; reducing the voting age to 16; and ending the legislative filibuster.
These do not represent the return to norms and values moderate Americans want.
It’s not fringe Democratic candidates floating such ideas but prominent presidential candidates like Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Beto O’Rourke, Bernie Sanders and Kirsten Gillibrand.
Mind you, that’s in addition to the Democratic support for the Green New Deal, a massive government undertaking that one former Congressional Budget Office director estimated could cost as much as $93 trillion.
Let’s be honest: Democrats wouldn’t have offered up such ideas if Hillary Clinton had won the election in 2016. This is all about Donald Trump and supposedly creating an environment to react to the Trump presidency which can prevent someone like Trump from winning again (via the electoral college).
Speaking of Facebook, Joe Bob Briggs notes that the best way to suppress hate speech is not to suppress hate speech.
I’ve seen Klan rallies that are so lame they don’t get noticed. Why don’t they get noticed? Because they chose some town that was wise enough not to care whether they gathered there or not. The Klan has no power until it goes into an area that hates it. Clarence Brandenburg knew this. He could have spoken down in the Appalachian part of Ohio, but he chose sophisticated urban Cincinnati instead. He was arrested, tried, and sentenced to prison. It was a great Klan recruiting year.
Tomorrow, a Houston taxpayer named Darryl Chapman will ask a judge to stop the new contract with Cigna, calling it an illegal procurement, rigged from the start to make sure they won. The court hearing is scheduled for 1:00 pm in Judge Steven Kirkland’s court.
One of the allegations is that Cigna was given information about medical claims that another company United Healthcare wasn’t given.
But why would city hall ever play favorites? Isn’t it supposed to be what’s in the best interest of taxpayers and of city employees and their families?
It’s hard not to notice that the Mayor’s close friend Cindy Clifford was in the room during the vote. Clifford was the head of Mayor Turner’s Inaugural Committee. She’s been on the winning side of a curious number of big city contracts since then.
City records show she’s the lobbyist for Cigna. The Mayor pushed through the Cigna deal today, even after learning the legal action had been filed.
Qatar faces an ongoing and immediate threat of destruction by revolution [by] its population of foreign workers. Qatari citizens make up only 12% of the actual population of Qatar. 88% of the populace are imported labor, and Qatar treats them horribly. It is a case that the UK Independent rightly describes as “modern slavery,” and there are far more slaves being abused than there are citizens abusing them.
For every Qatari citizen — male, female, adult, child, elderly — there are seven working age foreigners walking around who have legitimate reasons to hate them…. [this] explains Qatar’s sudden decision to purchase many new tanks and mobile artillery, allegedly to prepare itself against soccer riots in the 2022 World Cup. You don’t need tanks to stop a soccer riot. However, the Leopard tank variation they are purchasing is optimized for urban warfare; and the mobile artillery can be used to fire canister, while providing the gunners with cover from improvised weapons like Molotov Cocktails, or rifles seized from the police.
Here’s a long (too long) essay about how the need for social media positivity is killing honest book reviewing. But it also displays that insular “only high literature talked about by inner circles of New York cognoscente is worth talking about” attitude that’s a contributing factor to most readers tuning out.
Like a Netflix show? Good luck, because Netflix is never going to renew it, because long show runs are not part of their business models.
“When the Dominatrix Moved In Next Door.” Neighbors go all NIMBY on a “kink collective.” That’s what you get for moving into such a backward, sex-hating location as [checks notes] Brooklyn. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
Is this a great state or what?
A Texas man decided to test the “all leashed pets welcomed” policy at Petco by taking his Watusi Steer to get a check up. Video shows the African Watusi walking through the doors of Petco with his owner by his side only to get welcomed with open arms. https://t.co/ad7ek6iJhOpic.twitter.com/bCndgDh6Bp
It’s Betomania time among certain media outlets after Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke announced he was running last week. So there’s a ton of Beto news below. Also, two names I had pegged as Out are now making noises about (possibly) getting In.
National Review‘s Dan Maclaughlin offers up a lengthy essay on the five lanes of the Democratic Presidential race. There’s lots of interesting analysis to chew on in terms of demographic and age trends and preferences among Democratic voters. I don’t agree with all his conclusions, but it’s well worth reading the whole thing. His summary:
My own ranking, for now, of the likeliest nominee:
Colorado Senator Michael Bennet: Leaning Toward In. Not seeing any presidential run news on Bennet this week.
Former Vice President Joe Biden: Leaning Towards Running. He keeps dropping hints. Obama’s Vice President seems like he’s going to run against the “new left.” God help us all. He’s also rich:
“Middle-Class Joe” Biden has a $2.7 million vacation home. He charges more than $100,000 per speaking gig and has inked a book deal likely worth seven figures.
Since leaving office in 2017, the 76-year-old former vice president has watched his bank account swell as he continues to cultivate the image of a regular, Amtrak-riding guy. He’s repeatedly referred to himself as “Middle-Class Joe” on the campaign trail and in speaking engagements as he publicly mulls whether to run for president.
Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro: In. Twitter. Facebook. Castro “dropped a list of 30 high-profile endorsement from Lone Star State politicians shortly after fellow Texan Beto O’Rourke announced his own bid for the presidency. The list includes San Antonio’s political powerhouse, Henry Cisneros; six current San Antonio city council members, including Rey Saldana and Rebecca Viagran; and multiple Bexar County officials, including Nelson Wolff.” That’s great…if you’re running for the president of Texas. Castro was always going to pick up San Antonio endorsements. How well can he run nationwide? He also visited Charleston.
Former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: Out.
Former Tallahassee Mayor and failed Florida Senate candidate Andrew Gillum: Maybe? Thought he was out, but now he has an announcement on Wednesday. May be a Presidential run, maybe an endorsement, maybe a 2022 senate run, maybe a teamup with Stacey Abrams to form Sore Loser PAC 2020. Who knows? Upgrade from Out.
California Senator Kamala Harris: In. Twitter. Facebook. Evidently all is not sunshine and roses for the Harris campaign, since Chelsea Janes in the Washington Post dinged her for “verbal miscues.” To wit: “In the first weeks of Harris’s campaign, the 54-year-old has fielded criticism for equivocal and imprecise answers to questions about her stances on specific policies and her record as a prosecutor.” She also had to return money from foreign lobbyists: “Three days after she announced her White House bid in January, Harris received $2,700 from Arthur R. Collins, a lobbyist for the government of Bermuda. Sometime in January or February, Harris also received $2,700 from Vinca LaFleur, a speechwriter for the royal family of Jordan.” But only, of course, after the media asked about them…
Oregon senator Jeff Merkley: Out. Filing for reelection to the senate instead.
Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton: Maybe? “He’ll spend much of next week’s congressional recess in key presidential primary states, starting in New Hampshire on Saturday and then moving on to South Carolina and Iowa during the week.” He also wants to end the filibuster and the electoral college. There’s no think like groupthink…
After O’Rourke’s announcement, Reuters dropped the news of “Beto O’Rourke’s secret membership in America’s oldest hacking group,” The Cult of the Dead Cow. Having been part of the Austin BBS scene way back in the pre-Internet days, I can tell you that all of this amounts to a whole lot less than meets the eye. The Cult of the Dead Cow were no Legion of Doom, and O’Rourke’s “hacking” seemed to consist mainly of trading warez (copied computer programs, sometimes hacked to remove the copy protection). Illegal, but just about everyone in the BBS scene did it; think of it as a very low-bandwidth version of Napster back when programs fit on a single floppy disk and had to been downloaded on 2400 baud modems. Though the fact this is coming out now does suggest lapses on both the media and Ted Cruz’s opposition research department.
The former El Paso congressman’s spastic “Hey, I’m still figuring out these new hands” presidential-kickoff video, in which his upper limbs appeared to be subject to mad random yanks by an angry puppeteer, was merely the latest odd detail in the saga of Weirdo O’Rourke. It was even weirder than Elizabeth Warren’s “Greetings fellow earthlings, I too enjoy fermented malt beverages!” video. Robert/Beto is a man so apart from other human beings that he recently thought nothing of ditching his wife and three kids so he could drive around the country, alone, accosting unsuspecting dentists to help him apply Novocaine to his aching soul. He might be the first person ever to run for the White House on a platform of asking the nation to help him figure out who he is.
The source of the angst is evident: Beto is a brainless rich kid who yearned to be cool and wasn’t very good at it. He flunked out of punk. He failed as a fiction writer. He belly-flopped as an alternative-newspaper publisher. And he’s so clueless that his apartment was once robbed while he was sitting in it. At his pricey Virginia prep school (Woodberry Forest School these days carries a sticker price of $48,000 a year), he thought he “just stuck out so badly” because of the “monoculture” there, which the Dallas Morning News called “white, wealthy and southern.” O’Rourke was and is white, wealthy, and southern, so he couldn’t have stuck out much more than Miracle Whip at the mayonnaise convention, yet he was wounded and alienated. Or maybe not. He put this in his high school yearbook: “I’m the angry son. I’m the angry son.” Below that: “I owe you everything, Mom, Dad . . .” You have to pick one, though, don’t you? You can’t be a seething rebel and a dutiful child. You can’t be Kurt Cobain and Kenny G. One pose nullifies the other. Or maybe O’Rourke was even then trying to position himself as acceptable to all constituencies.
Snip.
What’s the deal with his net worth, which is estimated at $9 million? I came across this line, on Heavy.com: “Peppertree Square Ltd. Imperial Arms is a real estate company, and Peppertree Square is a shopping center in El Paso, which was a gift from his mother.” Jeez, I remember when I thought my mom was sweet for buying me a blazer. I want Beto’s mom. When Beto’s dad died, he left the boy an apartment complex worth $5 million. Also his father-in-law William D. Sanders is worth a packet. Bloomberg once estimated he was worth $20 billion.
So far, then, O’Rourke’s life story does not look like a fable about rising to meet fate’s challenge, but more like privilege and dilettantism.
Over at the New York Times, Gail “Team Kamala” Collins offers up a takedown of O’Rourke. Now I’m no O’Rourke fan, I’m happy to cheer on blue-on-blue attacks, and that Vanity Fair piece is eminently mockworthy, but this is a thuddingly bad piece of writing. It’s one long, smug, graceless sneer. You could have thrown a rock into a random crowd at CPAC and likely found someone capable of writing a better takedown of O’Rourke.
Finally, an observation: In addition to the contact harvesting splash screen, O’Rourke’s website only has four links: Shop, Jobs, Donate, Contact. No room for such trivia as “issues” or even a candidate biography. I guess the figure a three-term congressman is such a “rock star” that he doesn’t need to be introduced…
New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Constitutionally ineligible to run in 2020.
Ohio Democratic Representative Tim Ryan: Leaning Toward In? Gets an Atlantic profile that starts off with him doing yoga.
Tim Ryan is a man containing multitudes. He is, as his contortions would suggest, a dedicated practitioner of hot power yoga and a meditation evangelist, but he sells himself as a champion of the American worker, and he speaks with the plain, sometimes brusque language of his mostly blue-collar constituents. In Congress, he has endorsed tax cuts for corporations, but he also supports progressive goals such as Medicare for all. And he’s a congressional backbencher—a relatively unknown Democrat from a rapidly reddening state. But he says he’s “very much looking” at running for president.
Author and spiritual advisor Marianne Williamson: In. Twitter. Facebook. She gets a “click through these 12 photos so we can display ads” bullshit listicle minibio from the Houston Chronicle that’s not worth your time and is only included here because other news about her is thin on the ground. Oh, she also has that world peace thing all figured out in a simple 4-step program: “expand economic opportunities for women around the world; expand educational opportunities for children globally; reduce violence against women; improve unnecessary human suffering wherever possible.” It’s so simple! I’m sure this would instantly end the fighting in Yemen and Syria. That same piece also compares and contrasts her ideas with Andrew Yang’s. I guess they’re both competing in the Weirdo Lunatic Outsiders lane.
Actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin were among more than four dozen people charged in a nationwide college admissions cheating scandal that involved wealthy individuals paying up to $6.5 million to place their children into elite universities, according to court records revealed Tuesday.
The alleged scam — which involved students being placed into top colleges such as Yale, Georgetown, Stanford, University of Southern California, UCLA and the University of Texas — was run by a man in California, William Rick Singer, who helped parents get their children into the schools through bribes, court documents unsealed in Boston showed.
Singer, who authorities said will plead guilty to racketeering, ran the charity, Key Worldwide Foundation, which received $25 million in total to guarantee the admissions, U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling said during a Tuesday news conference.
Most of the students did not know their admission to the school was due to a bribe, authorities said.
The children’s parents would pay a specified amount of money fully aware it would be used to gain college admission. The money would then go toward an SAT or ACT administrator or a college athletic coach who would fake a profile for the prospective student — regardless of their athletic ability, according to the charging documents.
There was a live broadcast covering more details, including the fact that one of the crooked SAT sites was in Houston.
The list of those indicted. The names include a Michael Center in the Western District of Texas and a John Wilson of the Southern District of Texas. According to KXAN, that Michael Center is UT’s tennis coach. Wilson may be the person involved in the Houston SAT cheating portion.
This comes right after the death of former UT President Bill Powers, who was up to his ears in a completely different UT admissions scandal, but one that also involved admitting unqualified students with wealthy, well-connected parents.
Developing…
Update: This is the longest video I could find of the FBI press conference:
Center, who is in his 19th year at UT, has an annual salary of $232,338. He agreed to accept $100,000 as a bribe in exchange for designating a student as a Longhorn tennis recruit, according to investigators. The applicant, according to the FBI affidavit, “did not play competitive tennis.” Center has been arrested and will appear before a federal magistrate judge at 2 p.m. Tuesday.
Three more people in Houston also arrested in the case:
At least three Houstonians were indicted in the scheme: Martin Fox, who is the president of a private tennis academy in Houston; Niki Williams, an assistant teacher at a Houston high school and test administrator for the College Board and ACT; and John Wilson, a founder and CEO of a private equity and real estate development firm.
Williams, Fox, and Wilson were taken into custody and later released on bond. Williams was released on a $20,000 unsecured bond, while Fox was freed on a $50,000 secured bond. Fox was also restricted travel outside of the Southern District of Texas other than court appearance in Massachusetts.
The UT admissions scandal was not only real, but several of the state’s most powerful politicians (including then-speaker Joe Straus) and media outlets conspired to bury the story. And there’s no guarantee that the problem has actually been fixed, especially since Wallace Hall is no longer serving on the UT board of regents. That Statesman obituary notes that “It’s an open secret that leaders of public and private colleges put a thumb on the admissions scale from time to time,” as though this is just something we should calmly accept as the way of the world.
I guess handling college admissions by admitting students based on objective criteria is just too hard a concept for some people to grasp.
There’s a saying that the good men do is often buried with them, but the evil they did often lives on after they’re gone…
